Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Election '07: 38 Days To Go

As part of the inevitable scare campaign, a figure that the Liberal Party are adoring throwing out there at the moment is that 70% of the Labor front bench are former Trade Union officials. For all I know it's true but does it really matter? After all, think of the generally-held perceptions of the most despised occupation groups. Journalists, used car sales people...and lawyers.

What percentage of the Coalition front bench are former lawyers?!?

(This isn't a rhetorical question. Does anyone know?)

EDIT: The answers are here. So why aren't Labor asking these questions?!?

Anyway, also high up on the list of most-despised occupations are politicians. And no matter who we vote for, 100% of the front bench are going to be politicians.

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Last night, watching Rudd's response to the newly announced Coalition tax policy, I thought, "I may be naive, but I’ll admit I was astonished to hear Kevin Rudd say that he will not reveal Labor’s tax policy until he’s has time to study the Coalition plan. So, he freely admits that Labor has no new policies, just reactions to Coalition policies? Reason number #598 why, for the first time ever (and it’s my fourth election where I’ve been eligible to vote) I’ll be voting Green this time around."

And I've since been told, "It’s a perfectly sensible response, Nico. The tax cut announcement was accompanied by new mid year fiscal numbers which means that any work Labor has done so far has to be done again on the basis of new assumptions about growth, the size of the surplus, etc."

In case you're wondering why I just make snarky comments instead of exploring the issues, this is why - I'm much better off leaving that to the smart bloggers.